Explaining Britain's Afghanistan mission proves tricky

So says John Hutton, the Defence Secretary on the radio today, in a statement that is technically accurate. He then went on to say that ministers are nonetheless considering sending more troops.

So what's going on? It's an example of a new government communications strategy meant to answer the simple, complex question: Why are we in Afghanistan?

Mr Hutton, since becoming defence secretary, has been pushing to change the story on Afghanistan. He and his team believe that the British public must be persuaded that the mission there is vital to their security. Military commanders are settling in for a long, long job in Afghanistan, but public support for expending more blood and treasure there is perhaps questionable.

Signficantly, the MoD is haunted by the echoes of Iraq, and the belief among some voters — and MPs and soldiers, come to that – that Tony Blair ultimately sent UK forces into combat to preserve British relations with the US. (It's a belief Mr Blair himself fuelled with his "blood price" declaration , described by one military friend of mine as the single most offensive political statement about defence in a generation.)

So the MoD is now trying to refine its Afghan "narrative" to focus on national security: we send our boys to fight and die over there to stop you dying over here, in crude terms.

This strategy dictates that any decision to send more British troops must be explained in terms of the immediate UK national interest, not esoteric diplomatic considerations: we're not doing this to please the guy in the White House, we're doing this to keep you safe.

All well and good. But there's a problem. Ministers and generals have been chewing over the possible reinforcement in Afghanistan for months now but no decision has been made. Depending on who you talk to, this is because either i) the various ministers and generals can't agree on what, if anything to send or ii) because Gordon Brown is refusing to make a decision on any of the options that have been sitting on his desk for some time.

And as the UK ponders, the US acts. Barack Obama this week OK'd another 17,000 US troops for Afghanistan and the US is stepping up its rhetoric on its European allies to do more of the fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

Mr Hutton is happily joining in the euro-bashing, not least because he knows that if when France and Germany don't pony up enough more boots on the ground, the Pentagon will come knocking on Britain's door, formally and publicly.

So the effect is likely to be that if when the UK does send more people to Afghanistan, the decision will almost inevitably now be framed in terms of Mr Obama's decisions: Britain joins in Afghan surge etc. And if that happens, the notion that the mission is primarily about UK national security will be overshadowed by the familiar feeling that decisions to put British troops in harm's way are based at least in part on the state of Transatlantic relations.

For what it's worth, my bet is on another battlegroup of around 1,500 – plus 300 specialist engineers and bomb-disposal people — being sent to Afghanistan. But if that is what the PM is going to decide, it would have been better to have said so before now.